If I Were a Book…

If I were a book, I don´t think I would be a particularly educating one.

I wouldn´t be able to teach someone how to speak Spanish or how to make the perfect crème brûlée. Hell, I wouldn´t even be able to teach someone how to bake chocolate chip cookies. I couldn´t teach them the difference between a congress man and a senator, or why North and South Korea doesn´t get along.

And I don´t think I would be the next great American novel. I wouldn´t be full of clever comments about our current society. I wouldn´t be the next Gatsby or Animal Farm. I wouldn´t be particularly philosophical or expand your vocabulary all that much. I wouldn´t warn you against where our society might be heading. I wouldn´t be 1984 nor Brave New World.

I wouldn´t be religious. I wouldn´t be a psalm or a verse or a moral tale, disguised in the figure of Jesus or Buddha. I wouldn´t tell people what to believe or what to do with their lives. I wouldn´t be a bible of a Quran. And I certainly would have no rules or guidelines, I´d expect you to follow.  I wouldn´t think that I had all the answers. Why, I don´t even believe I have all the questions!

And I don´t think I would be a horror. I´d just wind up scaring myself. I couldn´t have been written by Stephen King, and there´d be no nightmares found within my pages. I´m not saying that I might not have blood and monsters and something dark and twisted and intangible, but I wouldn´t set out to scare you. I wouldn´t try to make you shiver with fear or hide underneath your covers.

Nor would I be a Harlequin or an erotic novel. I wouldn´t have fifty euphemisms for penis or a perfect Prince Charming hiding between my pages. And neither would I be a spy thriller or a Gothic novel or a science fiction book full of rockets ships and travels through space. I wouldn´t have robots and aliens and something hiding twenty thousand leagues under the sea. It just wouldn´t be me.

No, I think I would be a fantasy. I´d be just a little bit odd. Maybe I´ll even be considered a bit childish by the people who likes to think maturity is letting go of wonder. I wouldn’t make much sense to people who didn´t enjoy me. I´d be full of magic though. Creatures of the likes you´d never seen. I´d have worlds you couldn´t have imagined on your own. I´d be occasionally funny and occasionally tragic, but full of weirdness and yet oddly stiff rules.

Yes. If I were a book, I think I would be a fantasy.

What about you?

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